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Inaugural episode features founder and CEO Aleex Sjarki in conversation with Julia Streets of Streets Consulting, tackling acceptance rates, responsible AI, agentic commerce and financial inclusion
LONDON - Ecommpay, the global payment services provider has launched its new podcast series - Making payments make sense - bringing clarity to one of the most complex and fast-moving areas of modern commerce.
Payments are powerful - but they're also full of jargon, competing solutions and endless opinions on what businesses should do next. For merchants, it isn't always easy to know what matters, what works, and what will actually make a difference. Making payments make sense was created to cut through that noise with straight-talking conversations with merchants, payment experts, industry voices and Ecommpay specialists, delivering practical insight and real-world examples.
"Payments can be one of the most confusing parts of running a business, full of jargon and conflicting advice, and that's exactly what we are setting out to fix," said Miranda McLean, Chief Marketing Officer at Ecommpay. "Making payments make sense is about having honest, practical conversations with the people actually shaping this industry, so merchants walk away with something they can put into practice."
A candid opening conversation
The first episode brings together Ecommpay founder and CEO Aleex Sjarki and Julia Streets, MBE, host and founder of Streets Consulting, for a wide-ranging conversation covering some of the industry's most pressing questions: how merchants can lift acceptance rates, where AI genuinely earns its place in payments, the promise and risks of agentic commerce, and Ecommpay's push to widen financial inclusion as it expands into new markets.
With settlement, reconciliation and open banking now largely standardised across the industry, Aleex Sjarki argues that acceptance rates remain one of the biggest areas merchants can still improve. Rather than a one-size-fits-all fix, he describes how Ecommpay builds bespoke, data-driven strategies for each client - pairing AI-powered analytics with the judgement of its payments experts.
The conversation also focuses on agentic commerce which Aleex Sjarki believes is powerful but high-stakes, demanding careful, responsible deployment.
The podcast closes with a discussion about Ecommpay's continued geographic expansion, and how local market access and modern technology can unlock economic opportunity in regions currently underserved by digital payments.
To listen to Making payments make sense click here.